Useful CSS shorthand
properties

One of the main advantages of using
CSS is the large reduction
in web page download time. To style text, you used to have to use the
<font> tag over and over again. You probably
also laid out your site with tables, nested tables and spacer gifs. Now all
that presentational information can be placed in one
CSS document, with each
command listed just once.

But why stop there? By using CSS
shorthand properties you can reduce the size of your
CSS document even more.

Font

This CSS shorthand
property will only work if you're specifying both the
font-size and the font-family - omit
either and the CSS rule
will be completely ignored. Also, if you don't specify the
font-weight, font-style,
or font-varient then these values will
automatically default to a value of normal, so
do bear this in mind too.

Background

Omit any of these commands from the background
CSS shorthand property, and
the browser will use the default values. If you leave out the
background-position command then any background
image will be place in the top-left of the container and then repeated both
horizontally and vertically.

Conclusion

CSS shorthand properties
are great! They're a great way to reduce the amount of code contained in a
CSS document, allowing for
faster download times and easier editing. Now who can argue with that?

Credits:
This article was written by Trenton Moss, founder of
Webcredible, a web usability and accessibility consultancy. He's
extremely good at usability testing and likes to offer
CSS help whenever he can.